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For starters, you're falling into that old trap of people comparing a spec to a class. Putting that aside, 50% shield wall and bear form, + shifting to escape outweighs any short term defensive abilities a dk has vs melee cleaves

Tankz, on 18 June 2011 - 03:53 PM, said:

and wall drops ALL your pressure for the time it's up.

Death strike drops all my pressure too

Tankz, on 18 June 2011 - 03:53 PM, said:

I haven't seen a DK die through heals yet if he's not CC'd (especially not with a pally) - and i doubt it will next patch, especially with the 100% healing increase buff.

You haven't seen them die through heals yet because of death strike, plain and simple.

At the end of the day, nobody is suggesting that death strike is fine. The point is, while it may be OP, it's *all we've got* to survive melee trains.

I prefer desecration for a couple of reasons. The main reason is that I simply can't spare the globals to reapply snares when I'm going for a kill. Your standard frost dk kill rotation is around 20 globals, *not* including HB. Speccing into descecration means I'm able to spend those globals NS'ing, not reapplying 10 million snares on that druid shapeshifting away, and it prevents pillaring healers from being able to los me while my NS stacks fall off.

Next, I find that desecration is very good defensively. Spreading my aids around the entire map allows my healer much more autonomy, and I'm not forced to continually peel.

I'll start off by saying that I don't think SLT is *inherently* OP. I think that most of its current OPness is due to how good shamans are even *without* it, that giving them this seems like overkill (had the exact same mechanic been given to pre-TSG rapeness holydins, for instance, I dont think anybody would have complained about it)

That being said, here are my thoughts on how SLT can be adjusted to make it work in arena.

#1- The first tick on SLT should not occur for 3 seconds. This gives teams time to counter it by destroying the totem before it pulses.

#2- In order to compensate for the 3 second wait, upon being placed down it should automatically apply a 3 second damage reduction buff to everybody who is in range of the totem (20% or so). The buff will remain even if the totem is destroyed before the first pulse.

#3- This one is kind of an "optional" suggestion, but SLT should not be useable while silenced. I don't think this would be necessary if the two changes above were implemented, but it's just a thought.

I think those changes alone are more than enough to bring it down to a reasonable level.

Normal Logic: Our new project didn't strike well with the public. Let's improve it so they will be interested to try it out nevertheless!
Blizzard Logic: Our new project didn't strike well with the public. Let's screw them over elsewhere so everybody is forced to play it regardless!

This is so true in every way, it has seriously been blizzard's philosophy not just in pvp but in pve too, to the point where it completely defies logic. One example that comes to mind was during wrath when scourge strike (and overall dk dps) was extremely sub par in both pve and pvp (pve especially). It was so bad that Pve dks dropped SS from their rotation all together and spent the runes on obliterate instead. Using this obliterate version of unholy, dks were STILL slightly sub par dps wise. Instead of making SS worth using, they nerfed obliterate to the ground.

For them, it's not "A B C is fine, D is the problem, let's fix D" it's "A B C is fine, D is the problem, let's make A B C worse than D so D is fine by comparison"

I've always said that the majority of resil should be put on pvp weapons, to discourage the use of pve/legendary weapons in arena. Imagine if weapons had half of our total resilience on them, legendaries wouldn't even be an issue in pvp.

What's ironic about this is that if they balanced abilities/talents around BOTH pve and pvp, there would be very little actual homogenization. The reason for the homogenization is because under blizzard's current philosophy it's easier to balance broad, general concepts than it is to balance specific abilities.

Plus, keep in mind if they balanced around pve/pvp, we would see an influx of unusual specs. Imagine enhance/arcane mage/holydin being just as viable as KFC or MLD. Unfortunately specs like arcane will never ever be truly viable, because its impossible to balance its high damage with any sort of control or defensive utility, without it being op in pve.

I've found stealing polymorph to be useful in stopping casts, if everything is dot'd and you're not able to get its full effect. If some caster is sitting out of range casting a cc, you can polymorph them for 1 second or so, at the very least it buys you 1-2 extra seconds (like a mini wind shear)

And to answer 1 of the OP's questions, hands down my most epic DS was back when lust was still allowed in arena, I was doing 2s and we fought a mage/rogue. My shaman partner bloodlusted us, then mage spellstole it off me, but I had DS on him and ended up DSing his spellsteal, which I used on him to steal my lust back LOL.

It is FUN FUN FUN, and actually has alot of potential. We went 20-0 tonight at 2200 mmr, the dk on my team got his 2200 achievement through this comp. The only team that has beaten us so far was a boomkin/mage team (the other losses on our team was due to us doing rogue/dk for points). The great thing about this comp (besides the self heals), is that when you coordinate DRW and then NS, all the NS's stack, so you've got 4 stacks of NS on your target. It's completely unhealable with ERW up.

* Death Strike now heals for 20% of the damage sustained, up from 15%.

== ==

Will have zero effect on pvp. It's "damage sustained," not "total health" (alot of people have missed that so far). Just to put this into perspective, if you have 100k health, you'd have to get hit for 100k over 5 seconds in order for it to heal 20k (what death strike currently heals for). It's a pve buff for tanks who are taking 150k+ damage over a 5 second period.